


Outlanders - Air Chall Thar Ùine

by hikarufly



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-20 09:58:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13715283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikarufly/pseuds/hikarufly
Summary: The Doctor and Clara get stuck back in time, thrown centuries behind Clara's times without knowing why or how, with the TARDIS still on the "other side". How will they get back to the 21st century from the 9th? See how Outlander meets Doctor Who... with better style hopefully!English is not my first language :)





	1. Chapter 1

Legends, they say, have their foundations in truth.

In the court that day it seemed that everyone was talking about a legend that had come back to life. The Queen mother sat by the big fireplace, warming her feet and embroidering a fine cotton shirt. Her long dress was simple yet elegant and regal, but she felt cold nonetheless. The big stone walls of the castles were not enough to keep her warm, perhaps because of what she felt. Her lady in waiting stood right in front of her, by the fireplace as well. Whispers accompanied her everywhere she went, and suspicion was the companion of those whispers. The court was not happy about her presence, especially after what happened shortly after her arrival there. She was not sewing, she was not capable of doing that. She just sat there, at the pleasure of the Queen mother, and listened to the discourses that were made not far from the two women, in that chamber.

«The guards patrolling the border of the forest have seen him again.» said one of the generals to the King.

«Who do you mean?» asked an Earl in visit there.

«Some say he is a Seer, a wizard that can read the future to you.» the King replied. «Others think he is an old fool that lives in the woods for he is as barbaric as the tribes in Scotland.» he continued. «I have also heard people describe him as a bard. He went to some village and talked about impossible dreams and astonishing adventures.»

The lady in waiting gave the flames a melancholic look.

«I believe he is a druid, Your Grace.» attempted to say the general. The Earl was mesmerised.

«A druid? A Celtic priest, here?» he asked. He was a tall, gouty man with more than two chins and small piggy eyes.

«My mother's lady in waiting knows him.» murmured the King, with an evil grin. His mother looked at him with disapproval.

«You should not talk about things you don't know, Edward.» said the Queen mother, continuing with her embroidery.

«Maybe we could ask her then. Lady Clara, please come and join us.» said the King, standing up from his chair and inviting her to take his hand to do the same. She looked at the hand for a second.

«Your brother does not enjoy my company, my liege.» she said.

«Which one, the soldier or the priest?» he enquired, knowing exactly what the answer was.

«Both of them, of course.» she replied, annoyed by that small talk. «But here I just see the Bishop Aethelstan.»

The holy man looked at her with repugnance.

«So I'll better excuse myself.» she said, standing up without aid. The Queen Mother stood up to.

«Please stay, Clara. Please.» she begged, and the girl sat down again.

«Tell us from there, then, Lady Clara.» continued the King, sitting back in his chair, far from the women.

«She won't tell you, Majesty.» said the Bishop. He was still a young man, younger than the king. He looked again at the girl. «She is consorting with him.»

Clara rolled her eyes and grumbled.

«Consorting?» asked the King. The Queen pretended to concentrate on her work, not wanting to listen. The Bishop started bubbling and blushed.

«I can not speak more of this.» he replied. His older brother grinned again, but did not insist.

«He has a golden ring, my king.» said the general. «in his left hand, with a green gem on it.»

Clara closed her eyes for a moment, still turned to the flames in the fireplace.

«He walks the woods in a long grey cape over a long robe, with a hood to hide his features. But the guards saw him, and under the bushy eyebrows and beard, they swear he is the same man we captured and set free months ago.»

«We cannot be sure, though.» said his second in command. «If I may say so, Your Grace.»

«Of course. Maybe he's just a mad man, or indeed a legend that came back from the past.» said the King. His brother, the Bishop, crossed himself.

«This is a sign, brother.» he murmured. «The divine punishment is upon us all. We should repent, all of us, for our sins.»

Edward the Elder, as he would be known, sighed.

«Perhaps, Aethelstan. But for now I suggest we go to bed, and rest. After saying our prayers, of course.» he concluded, winking at Clara. That was too much, and she stood up and rushed away, with the Queen mother after her.

«Clara, Lady Clara, please.» she ran towards her and took her by the arm. She resisted shaking her away: the Queen mother was so fragile.

«Queen Ealhswith, please. Let me go in peace, I just... I just want to go to my room and rest.» Clara implored her. The Queen did not let her go.

«Is it true? What my son says, about you and that druid?» she asked. Clara did not reply, she couldn't.

«Please, Majesty.» she asked again. The Queen let her go and crossed herself. She only hoped her lady in waiting did not expect, or there was no way she could conceal it.

 

In the middle of the forest there was a small clearing. There stood a few tents, forming a small campsite. Each tent had small furniture made of wood under it, as several rooms protected by the cloth from the adverse conditions of the weather. There were strange objects made of thread, bones, metal and wood as well, some almost destroyed, others just made and the rest in between.

The druid came back to the camp, and took down his hood. He had a head of grey curls, a long beard of the same colour and bushy eyebrows guarding two profoundly blue eyes.

He put together a small stack of wood and, with a flint, set fire to it. He warmed his long fingers against it, sitting by it, and sighed.

He was spotted by the guards again. No way he could talk to Clara that day, she would be observed cautiously by everyone at court, and she would not reach him that night.

He had tried again. He was sure the trick would work this time, and failing made the disappointment even more painful. He threw a stick against the fire, and sparkles danced in the advancing dark. The sun was setting down, and the light was getting weaker. He lighted the fires around the camp: he had found a chemical substance that made them blue, keeping the locals away thinking they were a small pack of will-o-the-whisps.

It was not the first time he was stranded in some time or place alone, of course, but this time it was different. His ship was on the other side of a door he failed again to open, and he felt lonely. He felt also concerned for his companion, for Clara. He knew what had happened, she told him of course. And he was furious. Fury had seldom led him to wise decisions.

He had disguised himself as a druid, and at times found it amusing. The locals were so funny.

But he missed Clara, and everything without her was without colour.

He had thought about taking her away from the castle and let her live with him in the woods. They had argued about it, she was so determined... but he could not permit it. He had a duty of care. If they were stranded there, with no escape, he had to make sure she was safe, and she was in the castle, not with him. She could have starved, get sick... while there, the Queen mother would have taken care of her, and maybe the rest of the court would look favourably on her for that.

He sighed again, and moved the lights. The wolves kept away, they were scared of the fires, but not the owls. They hooted in the night, and their chant lulled him to sleep.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor and Clara jumped as high as they could, and suddenly the latter could not see the former. Clara looked around, panicking for a moment: was she so high on whatever they had before – alcohol, sugar, drugs perhaps – that she was forgetting things and having blanks in her memory? The Doctor was on stage, with his guitar and his glasses and his Blackstar T-shirt way too early in time, since it was about 1974. They were in the countryside outside Oxford for a very secret and completely bonkers rock festival that felt like a huge rock rave.

Clara screamed her lungs out to cheer the band and the Doctor too, that performed a truly unique solo riff with that strange and wonderful guitar of his. Some woman, not much older than her, stepped onto the stage and, grabbing him by that same out-of-time T-shirt, gave him a French kiss for a very long number of seconds, as the mass of youngsters incited them to continue. The woman finally let him go, and he got down in a matter of seconds, looking for Clara, but visibly confused.

His companion crossed her arms and took away his sonic sunglasses.

«Your eyeliner has melted.» she noted, keeping the sunglasses in her back pocket.

«So has yours.» he replied, still confused.

«I thought you have had enough of that with Missy.» she said, trying to scream louder than the people around them.

As he seemed not to hear her, out of pretence or actual noise, she moved away and he followed with his guitar still with him.

«I had.» he finally replied. Clara seemed better disposed.

«I believe the party is going on somewhere else...» she said, listening to some music from the woods around them. The Doctor took her hand and they both followed the strange sound that grew more and more inside the forest, until they found a clearing..

At first, Clara and the Doctor thought they were just a very strange group of junkies, or perhaps some guys too stoned to understand or want to understand the rest of the world. The music was weird enough. But when they got closer and closer, they decided to stay unseen in the bushes.

In the clearing in the forest there was a stone circle, with 6'5'' tall stones of irregular shapes. The group was made of young men and women, as well as elderly people, with long and grey beards and or long white curls: they were both male and female. Their robes seemed the parody of those that a medieval wanderer could wear, but their eyes were genuine. The younger danced around in a circle, moving around the stones, while the elders murmured and chanted Gaelic-sounding words. After a few moments, a very young girl and a middle aged man rose up and started to chant, pacing around the fire at the middle of the circle. Her voice was like silvery water, his like roaring fire.

Clara would have been inclined to laugh at them, in other circumstances, but not in that moment: everything felt too intense to be ridiculous, even with the costumes and the hippie style fire at the centre. There was a moment both her and the Doctor felt like a cold shiver down their spine, like a single forest spirit had tipped on their shoulders and blew gently on their necks.

The song finished, and the clear sound of police sirens filled the freezing air of what had become deep and dark night. All around, the audience they had left behind was running away, and the bobbies were getting closer and closer. The gathering of the stones flew away into the woods, and so did the Doctor and Clara.

Or at least, that was what they meant to do.

 

They ran through the circle of stones, but as they went on, hand in hand, in the middle of the forest, they realised that the crowd had completely vanished. There was no one, no sign of the stage and musical equipment of the rave, nor of the strange tribe that had performed that ritual. The forest ended and the hills descended into a valley that was completely immersed in the dark. No electric lights, no fires, only the full moon shining in a sky bombarded with stars.

Clara tightened her grip, especially as she felt him doing the same. She could hardly see.

«Where are we, Doctor?» she asked, taking her phone and trying to light up the torch one handed. The light was small but made her at least see him.

«We haven't moved.» he said, reasoning with himself out loud, rather than talking to her. He raised a finger as to assess the direction of the wind, he bent down to caress the grass, he took a few strings of it and tasted one.

«The place is the same... but the time is wrong.» he declared. «We must get back.»

«But it's too dark! How will we find our way?» she asked. «I have no signal at all in my phone... but I have a compass in it!» Clara added.

They established it was not that bad a start and, still hand in hand, tried to get back on their way. They walked around the woods for quite some time, trying to find the place where they had parked the TARDIS – it was a parking lot where nobody could mistake it for a toilet but at the same time could pass unnoticed. There was no parking lot, only grass, rocks and trees. Like technology was yet to be thought of.

«Are we in the past, Doctor?» asked then Clara, ignoring her will to panic. She was well over the moon travelling with him understanding things at his own pace, but only when there was still a ride home to cover that alarming aspect of her companion's behaviour.

«I wasn't sure before, but...» he indicated her the horizon: the hills were painting themselves of the golden pink of dawn, and the stars were slowly turning down their lights. They moved again and were presented with a true masterpiece of landscape: no tar, no concrete, no electric lights, only green hills, forests as full as ripened fruits, villages of small houses gathered together and a strong, dark grey castle with banners and towers.

Clara had to admit with herself that she had rarely seen anything so beautiful in her entire life. The sun came up and seemed to create life itself out of that panorama, infusing light in each and every single thing she could see. She smiled, and fought the tears in her eyes, for she was almost moved. The Doctor pretended not to see and enjoyed the moment, until he saw someone move around the villages, and suggested her to cover in the woods for that moment.

«We will get back, don't worry... but since we're here...» he suggested. She was about to reply something clever, but it all went dark, suddenly.

She could only remember the grassy ground stopping her fall.

 


End file.
